Democracy Muslim Brotherhood style making Mubarak look good

Democracy Muslim Brotherhood style making Mubarak look good

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Egyptians are talking nostalgically of the good old days. These turn out to have been under reviled president Hosni Mubarak, deposed by a popular revolt in February 2011.

Conditions in Egypt have worsened in almost every regard since the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was elected president a year ago. The opposition is planning huge demonstrations Sunday to mark the anniversary. Oh, and they’d like him to resign, too.

Egyptians have much to be fed up about. There are frequent power cuts and gas shortages, witness the snaking line-ups outside gas stations. Food costs more. Murders and rapes have skyrocketed as police abandon their duties. Joblessness among young people approaches 25% as the economy goes into the dumpster.

Sectarian strife is increasing in the Sunni-majority nation, with murderous attacks on Shiites and Coptic Christians.

Meanwhile, Morsi and his backers are more interested in shoring up their position and correcting people’s morals. To achieve this, they overrule the law when it suits them. They are also installing fellow Islamists in key positions, especially in the state bureaucracy.

In a speech Wednesday, the president blamed “enemies” of Egypt” for paralyzing its new democracy. (If the ploy sounds familiar, that’s because it is a well-used trope of authoritarian leaders. It was last heard issuing from the mouth of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the riots in Turkey.)

“I took responsibility for a country mired in corruption and was faced with a war to make me fail,” Mr. Morsi said, blaming some senior officials, including the man he beat in last year’s presidential run-off, as well as neighbourhood “thugs” for the unrest.

“Political polarisation and conflict has reached a stage that threatens our nascent democratic experience and threatens to put the whole nation in a state of paralysis and chaos,” he said. “The enemies of Egypt have not spared effort in trying to sabotage the democratic experience.”

Writing in the influential pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram, Nashwa Abdel-Tawab details some of the Egyptian president’s missteps.

Morsi suspended the rule of law to immunize his decisions from legal challenge, claiming that he was doing so to protect the revolution. He has presided over appalling economic deterioration as unrest chased away investors and tourists. Foreign currency reserves are half of what they were under Mubarak. The stock exchange hit an 11-month low last week, and the Egyptian pound has lost 10% of its value in as many months. His government has been negotiating a $4.8-billion loan on easy terms from the International Monetary Fund seemingly forever.

His newly appointed culture minister has not entered his office in two weeks after it was occupied by demonstrators who accuse him of trying to “Brotherhoodise” the ministry. And the president’s response? To appoint 17 new governors, seven from the Muslim Brotherhood,.

In addition, Morsi has turned his back on the revolution, claims Sara Korshid in The Guardian.

He formed temporary alliances with the interior ministry accused of killing protesters; with the military responsible for the deaths of protesters in the months that followed Mubarak’s ousting; and with the businessmen accused of corruption under Mubarak. Instead of restructuring the interior ministry, Morsi praised it, saying that the police was “at the heart” of the revolution. And instead of holding the army responsible for the deaths of protesters under military rule, Morsi said it “protected the revolution”.

This could have been tolerated if Morsi’s rule had brought prosperity to Egyptians. In an ailing economy, the quality of life has worsened.

In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, Mohammed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace prize laureate and opposition leader, says Morsi et al. have no idea how to kickstart the economy, let alone how to govern.

Egypt could risk a default on its foreign debt over the next few months, and the government is desperately trying to get a credit line from here and there — but that’s not how to get the economy back to work. You need foreign investment, you need sound economic policies, you need functioning institutions, and you need skilled labour.

So far, however, the Egyptian government has only offered a patchwork vision and ad hoc economic policies, with no steady hand at the helm of the state. The government adopted some austerity measures in December to satisfy certain IMF requirements, only to repeal them by morning. Meanwhile, prices are soaring and the situation is becoming untenable, particularly for the nearly half of Egyptians who live on less than $2 a day.

The executive branch has no clue how to run Egypt. It’s not a question of whether they are Muslim Brothers or liberals — it’s a question of people who have no vision or experience. They do not know how to diagnose the problem and then provide the solution. They are simply not qualified to govern.